Cue the Nostalgia, Because The Baby-Sitters Club is Making a Multi-Media Comeback

Actress Elle Fanning is bringing the blockbuster pre-teen series to life.

For a phantom club of now-millennial aged women, the names Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne and Stacey McGill conjure images of coiled telephone cords and sky-high side ponytails held with colourful scrunchies. To those of us who were young female bookworms in the ’80s, ’90s and early aughts, Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club series was the formative reading experience. The lives of these pre-teen girls served as a textbook on the fundamentals of female friendship and entrepreneurship, and those are lessons we’ll carry with us for life.

And, living in the era of endless ’90s reboots and 2002 fashion trends, there’s a good chance you’ll have an opportunity for the BSC to teach you these lessons all over again — in multiple mediums. First up: in February, Netflix announced that they’re developing the books into a 10-episode series, with Rachel Shukert of GLOW serving as showrunner and Lucia Aniello of Broad City taking on the role of director and executive producer. No further filming or cast information has been shared, so it may be a while before you’re bingeing Netflix’s take on Boy Crazy Stacey over popcorn with your girlfriends.

In the meantime, you can swap out your podcast playlist for all 131 Baby-Sitters Club titles on audiobook. Audible, the world’s largest producer and provider of downloadable audiobooks, has announced that they’re releasing the entire collection of Martin’s blockbuster book series to their platform. The first five stories in the collection will be performed by pop culture’s own teen princess, Elle Fanning—someone who, although not a pre-teen, inhabits the exact bubbly energy I would want from a BSC narrator. “The fierce friendships and babysitting adventures of The Baby-Sitters Club have been so much fun to perform,” she commented. “It has been such an exciting and new experience for me to bring this entrepreneurial squad to life as Audible books. People can now relive these coming of age stories in a whole new way or enjoy them for the very first time!”

Preorders for The Baby-Sitters Club are on sale at Audible now, but the titles won’t actually be available until August 13th. If you’re craving the throwback, you’ll have to check your parents’ attic or re-purchase the titles on Amazon.

 

 

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